2025 truly was the year of the witch, and it seems members of the Horror Writers Association agree — THE BEWITCHING by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and WITCHCRAFT FOR WAYWARD GIRLS by Grady Hendrix are 2025 Bram Stoker Award nominees for Superior Achievement in a Novel!
In addition to both novels featuring witches, they also both have loooong lists of accolades and acclaim. WITCHCRAFT FOR WAYWARD GIRLS started 2026 off strong by landing at #2 on the New York Times bestseller list, along with #5 on the USA Today bestseller list and #2 on the Indie bestseller list! The book received critical praise across the board, including three starred reviews, and was the winner for the Goodreads Choice Awards in the Horror category. The New York Times concluded “Hendrix’s genius as a horror writer is his ability to develop complex, human-scale emotional arcs. He gilds these dramas with a glorious, gory layer of monsters and magic, but in his work, the uncanny exists primarily to symbolize real-world issues… At turns frightening, anxiety-producing, infuriating, beautiful and sad, “Witchcraft for Wayward Girls” is a perfect horror for our imperfect age.”
THE BEWITCHING similarly earned enormous critical praise, including a whopping six starred reviews! Upon its publication last July, it became a #10 USA Today bestseller and #5 Indie bestseller, and won the SheReads Award for Best Horror Book. Kirkus lauded the novel, citing how “The writing is beautiful, which is par for the course for Moreno-Garcia, and in Minerva, she has created a deeply original character, steely but yearning. This is yet another triumph from one of North America’s most exciting authors. Suspenseful and terrifying; Moreno-Garcia hits it out of the park yet again.”
The winners for the awards will be presented on June 6th, 2026 at StokerCon in Pennsylvania. The Bram Stoker Awards are hosted by the Horror Writers Association, and have been presented across various categories since 1987; the first year of the awards also presented a two-way tie for the Novel category. It’s never too late to go back to your roots, HWA…
Congratulations, Silvia and Grady!